Sep 122021
 

About a month ago, I was searching for an upgrade to my FX503. There were lots of options and I went through comparisons of the 1050 with 1650, 1650ti and the 1660ti. I finally decided to take the HP Omen with the Ryzen 4600 H with 1660ti. The build reviews were nice and the performance was great, owing to the 6GB VRAM. Also, the selection of ports was decent. I needed a type-C port.

Amazon gave a suggestion about the new laptop launch, the Victus line right around the sale day and the listing got me intrigued. Gaming laptop at 72k. My initial budget was 70-80k and this 3050 model was well within the range.

Then I pulled an all-nighter comparing 3050 with the 3060 and boy was I taken aback. The 3060 performed so much better and I now had to manage my budget by pushing it over a lakh. Nail biting stuff but I went through buying the 3060 model.

The packaging was fairly minimal.

The port selection is quite useful, all being high speed ports of version 3.2. The type-C port is version 3.2 gen 2 too with sleep charge and display 1.4 support.

Port Selection Left
Port Selection, Left

The HDMI port supports up to version 2.1 which is great for upwards of 4K 60 FPS with a supporting monitor or TV.

Continue reading »
Oct 042020
 

Ever got bored of gaming on the same old small screen of your phone? Ever felt the need to own the Snapdragon version of a Samsung device instead of the Exynos one? Ever felt the need to own a device which isn’t a laptop but can act as a lightweight one?

The galaxy tab S7 has it covered. Well at least the second need may not be very relevant in this case, as the tab S7 (hereon referred to as the tab) doesn’t have an Exynos version. The tab’s insides include the latest (at the time of this writing) Snapdragon 865+ chipset, 6 gigs of RAM, 128 gigs of storage, and a respectable 8000 mAh battery.

The tab

The hardware externally is great too. You get the S-pen in the box, which can attach magnetically at the back. The USB type-C gen 3.2 is quite handy with different peripherals. Also, you may fancy the attachable, optional, keyboard cover which comes with a kickstand. The cameras are OK, just OK, not the note or the S series level.

With the commonalities aside lets dive into the gaming part. The 865+ proves once again why it is best for gaming. On this tab, you can see its prowess. I’ve tested the tab with the following games:

Continue reading »
Feb 212020
 

The Shield K1 tab was quite a masterpiece of its time. An excellent 8 inch display with a 1900X1200 resolution IPS panel with dual front facing speakers, an okayish front and rear cam combo (both 5 MP with HDR), a mini HDMI out(upto 4K output), an OTG compatible micro USB port, a micro SD card slot and a 3.5 mm headphone jack.

The ports

The exterior is nothing to complain about. The speaker grills are covered with rubber and the back is plastic with a rubber finish too, for a great grip. All this external interface is built around an NVidia Tegra K1 processor with 192 kepler cores for graphics with an ARM Cortex 2.2 GHz CPU, attached to a 2 GB memory. Storage is 16 GB which was not bad for a 2015 device. The 128 GB supported micro SD card slot allows one to use a memory card as internal storage which can be quite handy.

Continue reading »
Dec 142019
 

When you think about anything gaming, you get a little bling in mind. Come on, yes you do. Well, I do. The design language is sure to include some good red and shininess, some sharp highlights and some more.

Oh that grill

The Acer predator in its 8 inch 1920X1200 (16:10) goodness flaunts an IPS LCD screen, a memory card slot, a volume rocker, a power button topped up by 2 Gigs of RAM, 32 gigs of storage and an Intel Atom processor (X7-Z8700).

These aside I want to particularly mention the 4 speakers on the 4 corners of the device. Sharp to touch and hear they pack a good punch in the audio department. Watching movies and YouTube, listening to music on device or online, are a treat. Whats more, the tab has a vibration motor, not seen in many, if any tab(which doesn’t have call functionality).

Continue reading »
Sep 272019
 

Ergonomics starts with a good chair. Back and neck support are the two places where any neglect will cause pains during long work or gaming sessions. I learned that the hard way when going through regular 4 hour stretches of TAB.

The Circle CH70 gaming chair comes with the typical gaming flair- the car seat design, adjustable height and angle, a back support pillow and a neck support pillow. It uses a good amount of memory foam (density grade 30) to ensure there is no permanent deformity. Honestly, I would recommend this chair even at offices if it were up to me. Sigh, it isn’t though.

It comes in three colors – black, red and green and the specifications are available pretty clearly on their website and hence I will concentrate on the experience part.

Continue reading »
Jun 052019
 

When you think about gaming, specially upgrading from a non gaming laptop, budget is definitely a concern. Unless you have been using a serious pro type laptop (pardon my jargon, I am not sure what expensive laptops are called other than expensive), you will think about the next laptop to be up-gradable and not too heavy on the pocket.

Enter budget gaming laptop. Many lightweight ones sport the MX950, which is passable as being a mobile grade graphics chipset. Before the GTX series goes out of stock, the desktop grade graphics card, meaning it will eat your battery life and throw out awesomeness in terms of graphics quality,  is the Nvidia 1050. Which is also on the laptop I am reviewing after a lot of usage. There are other chips from AMD too but for the sake of this being a specific laptop review I will skip that part. (Vamspaz is all about gaming so rest assured there will be more articles on other cards too.)

This model in particular comes with a 1080p 15 inch TN display, meaning a wicked refresh rate with bad visibility. It has 2 USB 3.0 ports and one 2.0. One HDMI 2.0 port, one card reader and the usual Kensington lock.

Powering this is a 6 cell battery with an 8GB RAM and a 1TB HDD. I have upgraded this to a 16GB RAM and a 1 TB HDD+ 128 GB(OS drive) SSD configuration. Also, it has the above mentioned GTX1050.

Continue reading »